goodbye privacy

[Mirlyn]

It's been fun.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201315000

 

[catocom]

yep, only 2 types of paranoia...

I have had the expectation for sometime that I'm being monitored,
but I've been actively monitored on several jobs over the years, so
I've kinda gotten used to the idea. Not that I like it though.

Oh, but when police are called about a neighbor disturbing the peace....nothing.
Second call w/request for meeting....nothing.
Things are way ass-backwards now. We have arrived.

 

[Winky]

Goodbye privacy, Hello Big Brother

Perhaps the bigger failing is clinging to the false idea that we’ve any rights left?

 

[Cerise]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsaTElBljOE

 

[jimpeel]

Trying to escape the surveillance state

SOURCE

Trying to Escape the Surveillance State
By Dan Fletcher Wednesday, Mar. 31, 2010

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1976541,00.html#ixzz0xgoAGtX3


Britain is one of the world's leading surveillance states. Privacy International, an advocacy group, ranks the U.K. right behind flagrant offenders like Russia and China. But such concerns didn't hit home for British filmmaker David Bond until the U.K. government lost a slew of data on his newborn daughter. In response, Bond decided to see what it would take to escape detection for a month in his data-happy homeland. The experiment turned into a documentary, Erasing David, now available for download from iTunes and Amazon.com. Bond sat down with TIME to talk about his film.

<Interview follows>

 

[jimpeel]

Erasing David

SOURCE

A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT PRIVACY, SURVEILLANCE AND THE DATABASE STATE

David Bond lives in one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world. He decides to find out how much private companies and the government know about him by putting himself under surveillance and attempting to disappear, a decision that changes his life forever. Leaving his pregnant wife and young child behind, he is tracked across the database state on a chilling journey that forces him to contemplate the meaning of privacy and the loss of it.

 

[jimpeel]

Now they have roving vans which scan you wherever you are without your knowledge or consent.

SOURCE

Andy Greenberg
The Firewall

* My Profile

Aug. 24 2010 - 12:00 pm

Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans

As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.

Here’s a video of the vans in action.

<MORE>

 

[ResearchMonkey]

<del, wrong thread>

 

[Gonz]

As disturbing as this is, it;'s not new. There have been multiple rulings that say we are not entitled to privacy once we leave our home. Although, the encroachment upon private property is a new twist.

 

[Mirlyn]

As disturbing as this is, it;'s not new. There have been multiple rulings that say we are not entitled to privacy once we leave our home. Although, the encroachment upon private property is a new twist.

Exactly. Its the lack of established threshold that compounds the nightmare of this precedent. If not the driveway, what about a carport? When does an enclosed garage become fair game? The open doorway to the house?

Wonder if we can tag a government vehicle much the same?

 

[Gonz]

Wonder if we can tag a government vehicle much the same?

Whatcha bet we'd be prosecuted for tampering with government property.

 

[jimpeel]

SOURCE

Homeland Security head praises city's security cameras
Comments

August 27, 2010

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday ranked Chicago’s Big Brother network of well over 10,000 public and private surveillance cameras as one of the nation’s most extensive and integrated — and Mayor Daley wants to make it even bigger.

“Expansion of cameras citywide is one of the highest priorities that will help us here in the city of Chicago,” Daley said with Napolitano at his side.

“Cameras are the key. They are a deterrent. They solve crimes. It deals with terrorism. It deals with gangs, guns and drugs in our society.”

After touring the 911 emergency center that doubles as a clearinghouse for surveillance video, Napolitano pronounced Chicago’s “very robust camera infrastructure” among the “top two or three” in the nation. Asked to identify rivals, she named only New York City.

“It’s not just cameras, but they are inter-connected and then connected back here so they can really be utilized to target resources where they need to go and to tell first-responders what they’re going to be confronting,” she said.

Pressed on whether the ever-expanding network is a good thing, the secretary said, “Absolutely. If you look at cities around the world — like London, for example, [and] Madrid has been employing more cameras — they are deterrents. But, they are also force-multipliers and they enable us to make the best use of our first-responders.”

Unlike so many other Cabinet secretaries who visit Chicago, Napolitano said, “I did not come on this trip bearing checks.” But, she said she took “careful notes” on Chicago’s needs.

Daley refused to reveal specifics of the wish list he delivered to Napolitano.

But, he once again made it a point to tout the $217 million 911 center that opened in 1995, after massive cost overruns.

“Remember, we had the vision and the foresight and the stamina to build this. Very few cities ever combined their fire and police department and emergency under one roof. We have done this. Very few cities, not only in the United States, but the world have done that,” he said.

Every year, Daley uses the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to pronounce Chicago as safe as any major city can possibly be.

Approaching the ninth anniversary, Napolitano agreed.

“In a world where we cannot eliminate all risks, Chicagoans can be confident that every effort that I know of that can be made is being made to minimize the risk. And if something were to happen, their first-responders are prepared,” she said.

In a news release distributed at the press conference, Daley also announced that the Department of Homeland Security has decided to assign a “full-time liason” to Chicago. The mayor's chief-of-staff Ray Orozco, a former fire commissioner, already serves on a Homeland Security Task Force. That's an elite group of first-responders charged with evaluating the national strategy on emergency preparedness.